Paying in Naivity
by KaleidoscopeOfWords
Summary: A frown adorned her face as she looked in the mirror. She reached up to reposition the hairclip that was hidden in her pink locks. Once satisfied, a smile bloomed across her features. She wore the Uchiha fan that day. She wore her insanity quite well too.


**In the Devil Town**

When he was gone, she preoccupied herself with other things. Things that required less emotional thought and triggered her rational side. Working in the hospital was a perfect example of this.

_The kunochi lay at her side, bruises littering her skin and traveling up her neck. Her eyes fluttered, on the verge between the realm of consciousness and unconsciousness. _

"_It's in her blood, a poison in her blood," Sakura stated, control coloring her features as she moved down the gurney, waiting for the group of nurses to finish sealing the woman's open wounds. Once one of them backed away, the rosette slipped into that empty space and took the raw hand in her own. Flipping the hand over, she let her fingers trail down until she reached a critical point. Chakra was then pulsed through at her will, her eyes trained on the face of the kunochi._

"_I know this, I'll get the antidote," she said rapidly, briskly; panic never showed in any shape or form as she cleanly escaped towards the door. "Someone continue here with the chakra. I'll be back."_

_And she was back, true to her word, slipping into position and injecting the vile. As a spasm racked the patient, causing her to cry out, Sakura's eyes did not waver nor soften. The nurse next to her flinched, extending her arm in some form of comfort. This caused her superior self to scoff slightly and run a hand up her arm self-consciously. A break in the armor, was it? _

_But as quickly as it had surfaced, it was gone, and Sakura was scribbling a note to herself on the clipboard she had picked up from the nearby counter. Already she was off again, moving on to the next patient in need._

_There had to be some emotion down in her. After all, the job of medical ninja is to care for the injured, to save lives for goodness sake. There had to be motivation somewhere._

"I promise you, it's not like that," Sakura corrected, answering just that same question that one of her good friends posed for her. "Being in a hospital, you can't be emotional. It's strictly business. If you let emotions get the best of you, you start to see your patients as friends and then you have a mess."

The man across from her gave her a disbelieving look, but she deflected it with a shake of her head. After she finished sorting the papers into neat stacks on her desk, she stood. The blonde followed suit, raising his eyebrows as Sakura placed a hand on the back of her chair to steady herself.

"I think you're lying," he challenged finally, accusation a clear undertone. "It's all emotional. It's what keeps you going from day to day."

"Being a medic isn't the same as being a ninja," Sakura refuted heatedly, her tone matching Naruto's.

"You aren't just a medic, Sakura," replied the man, now a look of sadness in his eyes. "You're a medic _ninja_."

But to her it wasn't the same. Her emotions were imbalanced and as a ninja, they had to be in check. Granted, some ninja worked on different levels of emotion. Naturo's emotion shown radiantly in everything that he did. For instance, Sasuke's didn't. And Sakura's once had, but whether it would ever again was the question.

For Sakura, she learned to tame them. Though seldom, and only when she is alone, Sakura sometimes lets them show. And they are not pretty after being cramped within one being for so long. One of the worst was the night after Naruto asked her about the hospital.

"_He – doesn't – understand," Sakura bit out angrily, shutting the door of her apartment gently before turning around and sliding down the door. Her hands fisted in her hair, and she burst into a fit of tears. Angry tears, sad tears, tears that she didn't even remember crying or why she was crying them, but they all met at one point or another as they danced down her cheeks to the tip of her chin and on her bloodstained jacket._

"_Not everyone can read you so well." The whisper was quiet and faint, but it was there, in the midst of her breakdown. Snapping her head up, the rosette tore her hands from her hair and hastily wiped the tears from her face, desperately commanding herself in control. Had she really let her guard down that much, been that distracted by the emotions she tried so hard to suppress?_

_But she hadn't the time to build herself back up. In her already blisteringly vulnerable state, she turned to find herself face-to-face with the last person she ever expected to see. The last person she wanted to see._

_He stood there in all his glory, for what it was worth. His hair was blown up slightly, maybe from the wind, and he was thinner than before, paler maybe, but his eyes. Those eyes had stayed the same._

_She was punching, hitting him, trying to find anywhere to hit him and be close to him at the same time. In the end, he had her pinned to her wall. Emotions consumed her. She couldn't place her feelings. It was all a mess, trying to sift through what she hadn't experienced in a good few years._

"_Why?" she asked, trembling under his touch among other things, other _emotions_, dammit! _

_And she sobbed into him, crying, trying once, twice to regain control over her emotions, her pride, before it all went spiraling down again. And he held her closely, his arms enfolding her. At first she fought it, and then she fully gave herself over to him. If he let go, she would fall. Her legs were useless._

_The next thing that she remembered was waking up. Her eyes peeled open, dry from the crying, from sleeping. She turned her apple gaze to find a figure hunched in a chair beside her bed. It was an orange-clad figure, and that didn't make sense._

_Sakura sat up, her muscles protesting, but she needed to sit up. She was confused._

"_Naruto?"_

_Her voice cracked unsteadily as he lifted his head. Blue eyes blinked into green. She was dumbfounded._

"_Where's Sasuke?"_

"_Hm?" he replied, his eyes narrowing at the question._

"_Sasuke. He was with me last night." Her tone was desperate, disbelieving. How did he not know?_

"_What?" Naruto's eyes snapped open. "Sakura, he couldn't have been. I would have sensed him. I followed you home and there was nobody with you until I found you after five minutes."_

_Gulping in a steady breath of air which seemed too stuffy all of the sudden, Sakura tried to correct him. "No, Sasuke found me when I came home. He held me. I touched him. He was there."_

_A look she didn't like crossed her friend's face. It was a wave of uneasiness, then a look of pity._

"_Don't you believe me?" She couldn't believe it, couldn't understand. He had been there. His eyes, his touch, his voice… it was all too real._

"_Sakura," Naruto said, his voice wavering, but then he continued, treating her like she was five years old, "I know last night was not a good night but..."_

_And there he was, the words coming out of his mouth for a child. No, this couldn't be. He had been there, she could have sworn. Eyes frantic, she pushed herself up and darted out of the room, looking for some sign that could prove she was not going crazy._

_A breeze drafted in from her open window, a window she normally didn't leave open. She shivered, her bare toes curling. _

_Her hands found her hair, and she pulled. She screwed her eyes shut and sank to her knees. _

_She wasn't a liar, she wasn't lying, she _knew he had been there. _Something caught her eye. Frantically, she inched closer to it. It had her chest constricting._

_She heard footsteps behind her; it was like a splash of cold water. Immediantly, her hands dropped, and she hunched forward a little more._

_"Sakura?" came the uneasy tone of Naruto. She took a deep breath and stood up, a small smile on her face. _

_"I dropped my hairclip," she said innocently, blinking at him before pushing the said item along the edge of her forehead and into her scalp. "Sorry, I guess I was just a little tired last night."_

_Even though he still looked untrusting, Naruto nodded slowly. _

_"Well then, I guess..." he began, his eyes still searching for the previous insanity, "I guess you can get ready for work. Just promise no more late nights."_

_"Okay," Sakura said blankly, walking over and giving her friend a hug. "Thanks, Naruto, really."_

_Then she glided out of the kitchen and into her room, removing her hospital coat from her closet. It was new and fresh, no previous stains littering its pristine surface. She smiled, a secretive smile. Everything was going to be fine._

_The clip in her hair shown in the pale sunlight that cascaded into her room._

_It was embedded with dark blue stones, an intricate pattern, with red and white too, forming some sort of emblem. When she turned to look at herself in the mirror, she frowned when she spotted the clip. But her hand eventually came forth to repoisiton it, causing it to gleam even brighter. Once the symbol was easier to depict, she smiled again, and left her room._

_The Uchiha fan sparkled in her hair that day._

**xx insanity is an evil beauty, i think. i hope i captured it right, with the mystery of the clip and such. **


End file.
